Thursday, September 29

Most Offensive Thing You'll See Today (Now With Bonus Update!)

As always, Supersonicsoul is late to the party on this one (hey, it's not my fault that I don't obsessively follow Twitter and Facebook; I've got kids on my lawn!).

Anyways, it looks like the whole fiasco started with Spreadshirt.com/NBA Off-Season.

Who created this mess, you ask? Well, that's a fellow named Mark in Florida, who thought it would be clever to piss off every one who ever lived in the 206 area code at some point in their life. Here's the tag line Mark came up with to sell his "product:"

You can't bring the Sonics back to Seattle but we've done the second best thing: bring the old Sonics logo to Oklahoma City. Maybe that's not the second best thing, but bitter Sonics fans and converted Thunder fans alike can now rep with pride!

Okay, that's just stupid, but whatever. Clearly, Mark didn't care if he ruffled a few feathers if it meant he could double his usual t-shirt sales to, I don't know, six, I guess. (Zing!). Unfortunately, that's when things started to get a little ugly for our friend, Mark, as the Bring Back Our Sonics entity on Facebook got wind of it, and their followers started harassing the heck out of poor, silly Mark. To make matters worse, it appears that ol' Mark wasn't even born in the US, and, indeed, is an ESL fellow, meaning he probably never anticipated the crapstorm he was about to walk into.

But back to NBA Offseason, the purveyors of this garbage. After numerous emails, voice mails, and complaints from Sonic fans, they issued this statement (shown in partial form here):

The intention with this particular shirt was to highlight the Seattle Sonics situation. The Oklahoma City Thunder are originally from Seattle and should still be in Seattle. There never was any malicious intent with it. We were not attempting to be disrespectful of a passionate fan base; we were highlighting the difficult situation between Sonics and Thunder fans, in our own humorous way.

Again, as lame as lame can be. While someone who wasn't born in this country might be able to hide by a language defense, the people at NBA Off-Season should have known that this sort of thing would have bothered the heck out of Sonic fans. Even worse, I can't see anyone in OKC considering buying this piece of crap either, which means it was just a crass attempt at bolstering their pathetic company's name.

I'm just biding my time until that sweet, sweet day 25 years from now when OKC gets sold to a Kansas City businessman who moves them into their new digs. Then, I'll make up a nifty t-shirt design that incorporates some great aspect of OKC heritage and then bastardizes it.

Of course, that would require a great aspect of OKC heritage, but, you know, one thing at a time.

Shane, I was going off of information I had read from another site and, if anything, was only trying to be sympathetic with the person who had created them. Now that I know he can't hide behind a lack of cultural understanding, I feel that I am able to say, unabashedly, that you and the people who designed these shirts are complete and utter a&&holes. Kudos to you.

Well, Shane, here's your opportunity to prove us all wrong. If you can explain why you think someone from Seattle would want to buy that shirt, please, by all means, give us your rationale. Then, if you can explain why someone from OKC would want to buy it, then, please, do the same.

Honestly, I don't think you can and that you're trying to make a buck off the anguish of Seattle basketball fans. As for the "wearing a Sonics hat to own wedding" stuff, you sound like those idiots who say they're not racists because they "have a black friend." Dude, anyone who was a real a Sonic fan would never make a crappy shirt like that.

Why would a Sonics fan wear that shirt? Because they want to remind everyone where the Thunder came from, hence the Never Forget title given to the shirt.

Why would an OKC fan want to wear it? Because they think it's a cool remix on a classic logo and shows the history of where their franchise came from.

The world didn't stop when the Sonics left Seattle. The NBA kept going and a few seasons and a couple of championships later, here we are. Your tears won't bring back the Sonics just like us not making this shirt didn't take them away from you.

And if you want to know, Sonics fans HAVE bought this shirt. In fact readers of this blog bought this shirt. We've sold a ton of them and there's no reason for us to pull them just because a small, bitter group of people are offended by the shirt. Last I checked the world doesn't revolve around your tiny group and Seattle isn't the center of the universe.

Ummmm, maybe I'm just a techno Luddite, Shane, but I've never heard of software that not only tracks readers of a certain blog to another site and tells what they bought, but ALSO tells what their favorite basketball team is. Either you're reading A LOT into your data (and assuming that everyone who reads this blog is a Sonics fan, which our hate mail tells us otherwise) or you're just flat out full of shit.

I'm with Paul, the guy's full of it. Good luck to him with his sales, but I think he's just trolling at this point. Hey, we're all definitely guilty of navel-gazing and whining too much about the Sonics leaving, but, crap, that design is just plain offensive. I can't even seen Oklahoma people being interested. If he's sold more than 10 of those things I'll eat my (Sonic) hat.

I've chimed in everywhere else, on this; I may as well chime in, here, too. To correct one or two minor points, Supersonics Soul never said Mark Malazarte (who was born in the Philippines and came to the US as a child) was an "ESL student." They referred to him as an "ESL fellow," which is, technically, correct, as English was most likely his second language. One simple Google search for Mark, listed as the shirt creator on the site where the shirt was originally marketed, will provide you with pretty much his life history, including his resume which lists his address, phone number, and email. Since English is one of two "official languages" of the Philippines, the "ESL" thing is really a non-issue and probably shouldn't have been brought up; however, I believe the intent was to cut the guy some slack or possibly find some rationale that could explain such a phenomenally misguided and boneheaded creation. He will get no such slack, from me. While Mark not only created and marketed this singularly offensive item, he has not had the backbone to stand up and defend his creation. Many of the sadly confused and hyper-sensitive "writers" from nbaoffseason have given their lame and impotent defenses for Mark's "work" but Mark, himself, has been oddly silent. You are a coward, Mark Malazarte. And if you don't want people to know your "personal" info, don't make it so readily available, online. This whole crew is a bunch of freaking idiots who clearly have no clue what it means to bleed Green & Gold.

i have yet to find a single "sonics fan" that actually supports that piece of garbage. if anything, we'd proudly purchase shirts that have the space needle superimposed onto a fist giving a middle finger with "FOKC" on the bottom. Oh wait, I already designed that shirt for my intramural basketball team. Why? cause we f*cking hate sh*tty city that stole our team. no one on my team would ever endorse that garbage. FOKC and FNBA forever.